


Withering Rose

by parallelDiversity



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, final good byes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelDiversity/pseuds/parallelDiversity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor finally says his goodbyes... in the worst of ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Withering Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Remember, people, this is fanfiction. It doesn't actually happen.

The morning of Rose Tyler's departure from the fair planet Earth was the most bleak out of all the other miserable three hundred and sixty-five. Rain was pounding against every shaky window pane and wind was blowing up the spring leaves in all directions, some even spinning around in little circles about. In the sky there was not a peak through to the heavens as the dull overcast blocked out all signs of life on the outside, the low-pressure system helping the weather by none-points. Even the usually avid rain-dancers were found locked inside the flats and town homes with their chilled fingers wrapped around hot cups of tea. However, there was one that had no "inside" or "home" to go to and he certainly wasn't going to shield himself from the wind. He was numb enough as it was. 

The Doctor barely felt his feet, heels clicking against the cobblestone pavement as he walked down the middle of the street, hitting the hard surface beneath him. It was as if he wasn't even conscious of his being in the small nooks of the barely remembered parts of the English countryside. His eyes, half shut and without light, only fixated on what was in front of him and even then, gave very little regard to it. What was a man to do when he'd lost his purpose, his very drive for giving any damns about survival. Now... rather, then... whatever time-plane he was walking on, it was barely about sustaining a proper body composure system let alone the normal functions for living beings. 

"People get old, Doctor... people die," one of the strange cat nurses had once told him once when he'd faced the strangely deteriorating Face of Boe. Even so, the words meant nothing to the man--rather, Time Lord--pushing nine hundred and looking barely over twenty-two. 

"You keep her safe, you hear?! You protect her!" The girl's mother had snapped at him in another body. He faintly recalled it then, as it brought back too many painful memories.

The Doctor was facing the rusted gates of the almost unworthy cemetery that was littered with stupid, conceited, almost full to the brim with hatred beings... humans... Rose was far from human; she was an angel to say the very _least_! Her compassion, humanity, how she could lift his spirits in the darkest hours... Rose Tyler was truly something angelic... cosmos-born and threaded hair like the starlets of the old ages, she _must_ have been something of another world. 

His hand, worn from working on the Tardis all afternoon, pushed against the gate to find it unlocked. This was a bit surprising and raised an eyebrow in the man's tired face, but not enough to care. Maybe the grave keeper had been careless, perhaps a little groggy from facing the lives of the limited youth that filled the Hemlock Restings Cemetery. However, The Doctor was not there to see the numbers of the dead could-have-beens. Instead he had dragged himself all the way to the other side of the small town to visit the rather fresh grave of his dearly departed... his dearly beloved. 

In his left hand was a single white rose that he'd stolen off an unknown bush en-route to the site. Its pure white petals were dappled in a gentle mist of the rising steam from the roads, the rain beginning to come to a light drizzle as the day pressed on. His throat choked a bit as he stepped over a young girl, age nine, and looked over at the few graves before her. All young boys and girls, some infants, humans... humans never given a chance. Though, he supposed that none of the creatures that thrived in the steamy heat-pocket called earth had ever a chance beyond their own minds. Anything farther was inconceivable. 

But Rose could believe it all... and she could adjust... she did adjust and she thrived in any place she was given, any situation she was confronted with. Her wide hazel eyes would sparkle with anticipation and fascination with each time plane she was guided through as if a young child just learning to walk over and over and over again. The cycle had never ended for the eternally enthralled girl. However, there was something that had happened between the left side of time and the right, events colliding and paradoxes mixing. An attack by one of the millions of harmful creatures across the galaxy and the end was faster than a blink. Rose had been beaten down and bruised up and tossed around in many situations, but there was always one thing lingering close behind her. 

Unlike all others, unlike the cures and the medical advances beyond comprehension, there was no cure for age. 

Eventually through the perilous circumstances of yet another battle with the Daleks and the Time Lord--God knows how they even still existed--forced the Doctor to leave her back in her mother's care. Even Captain Jack agreed which he'd never begun to suggest through all the insanely threatening situations they'd been in. The only difference was that time he wasn't leaving the Tardis behind. No key, no Tardis, no way back. 

Even so, The Doctor never stopped watching over Rose. He never would. He would always park his time machine at least a town away from her location and take the local travel machines to a nearby place to check on her from major age reaching to the next. However, the results of his disappearance was far from what he wished. 

Rose had shut herself in her house with nothing but a computer and more than a million books. She lived in online forums with other Doctor sighters that wished to find him again. Even so, her efforts were in vain and she never did find him again even though he found her many times before. He'd even left a white rose in her hands one night as he'd snuck in to press a light kiss to her feverish cheek. "Stop overworking yourself and move on, Rose," he'd grimaced in pain as he climbed back out the window and left for his travels in war once again. 

These meetings kept on for years and years from one birthday to the next until finally there were no more days for him to climb through her bedroom window and leave a white rose in her hands. It was that day that the war was won and the day he could finally take her back... it was the day that Rose Tyler left the earth and would never come back: her death. 

"Calm down," Captain Jack had insisted which was returned with a hard punch to the face. "Damn it, Doctor!" 

"Don't tell me to... t-to... calm down!!" The Doctor had screamed in a rage fueled by tears, anger, and pain of the hearts. 

The Doctor felt the throbbing in his knuckles and made a small mental note to jump over to the plane where Jack was settling down into an era of sex and money: Vegas, 1974. 

Even so, nothing else mattered as he stood at the end of the dirt mound that only deepened to six feet beneath his stance. The small and almost pathetic headstone at the front reading, "Rose Tyler, Traveling The Stars Is Never Enough." No birthday, no death date. It angered The Doctor, but it barely mattered. No one took the opinion of a man that threaded the fabric of time into count. Who wrote the headstone, he wondered. It was very true, but no one but Mickey or her mother would know that and they'd long since died. Another sign like Bad Wolf or was it just some sappy line from another crappy movie that those flesh sacks went on about. 

The Doctor bent at the knee and knelt to lay the rose over top of the girl's grave. The rain started to become more dense as he closed his eyes and said a small prayer from his home. At least, one of the few he could remember. His head rose and he felt the pained burning of tears flood the back of his eyes and nose. He could feel the grief overtake his usually calm or happy temperament. "Rose," his voice cracked a bit as he wiped his eyes and ran his hand down his face as if to slide the emotion right out of it. "Rose, why... God... You were so strong," he bit his lip as he patted the uprooted earth that blanketed her casket that had roses carved in the lid. Someone paid a pretty penny for her burial and he was thankful for it. 

A few tears and a swallowing of his pride as he stood to his full height, sighing and coughing a bit to clear his head, he saluted the headstone. "To Rose Tyler... the strongest... and the bravest companion to The Doctor... and the most kind, the most beautiful, and the most lovely... my dear Rose... you are with the stars now," he choked back more tears as he turned on his heels and kept his good byes short and simple. He wouldn't take another second facing his biggest fears of the loss of the one he loved. 

Even so, people move on... they have to. "Dying can wait, but for now, there are more delicate matters in the balance," the Doctor remembered the wise words of The Face of Boe. 

"Dying... can wait," he muttered as he shut the gates behind him and sighed. "It couldn't wait for you... Rose..."

~FIN~


End file.
